FISMA News

Achieving Compliance and Realising Cost Savings

(Nov 17, 2008)-- Innovation Software Consultants has launched 'Tracesoft' - a quality management tool to meet the demands of British Retail Consortium (BRC) Global Standards for those supplying major retailers.

"The Global Standards represent 'best practice' for food, non-food and packaging materials suppliers," explained Innovation Software Consultants', Stephen Mumby. "It is a gauge against which manufacturers of not just retail brand/own brand products but also branded products, are evaluated - so is critical for these organisations.

"However, achieving these Standards can be challenging, in terms of additional paperwork - as all ingredients, materials and processes must be recorded. This can be an onerous task if undertaken with just a clipboard and pen, but modern IT solutions can simplify this task and reduce the risk of error. We have devised hand-held, mobile, wireless data capture units that are easy to use and very reliable. We've found that companies employing these systems are reporting significant time savings, increased efficiency and a reduction in production down-time as errors have been identified and rectified far sooner."

Tracesoft's unique system allows operators to deploy a combination of the latest mobile and fixed-point technologies to provide real time data capture using multiple filters to provide quick and easy reporting and trending over time. 'Catch up' software ensures uninterrupted wireless operation and the fully scalable platform is built on architecture that can operate on a single mobile computer or factory wide, with added functionality to manage and control 'roll out' of applications - growing in line with business needs.

"It is possible to achieve BRC 5 with a paperwork system, but the workload is enormous and the resultant system will always be time-consuming and vulnerable to human error," adds Stephen. "In this situation, it is difficult to achieve the spirit of BRC 5 and achieve the ongoing requirement to provide a continuous improvement programme without using an automated process that captures and validates data at source. This sort of system ultimately pays for itself in cost savings and makes compliance a much simpler process."

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